Nobel Prize in Physics is Shared by a Woman, the First in 55 Years

(CNN)The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to a woman for the first time in 55 years, and for only the third time in its history.

Donna Strickland, a Canadian physicist, was awarded the 2018 prize jointly with Gérard Mourou, from France, for their work on generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses. They shared the award with an American, Arthur Ashkin, who at 96 becomes the oldest Nobel Laureate. The Nobel laureates in Physics are announced at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden.Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, recognized for her co-discovery of radiation, followed by Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963 for discoveries about nuclear structure."We need to celebrate women physicists because we're out there. I'm honored to be one of those women," Strickland said in a news conference following the announcement in Stockholm. Speaking about being the third woman to ever win the award, she said she thought there might have been more, adding: "Hopefully in time it will start to move forward at a faster rate."The announcement comes one day after a senior scientist with Cern, the academic home to a number of Nobel prize winners, was suspended for saying that physics was invented and built by men.